As shocking as they may be, the provocative sermons of Barack Obama’s pastor come out of a tradition of using the black church to challenge its members and confront what preachers view as a racist society.

Yet while the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.’s racially tinged messages still resonate in some black churches, evidence also suggests his style is receding into the past as civil rights-era pastors retire.

Wright’s words have come under scrutiny because of his ties to Obama, a longtime member of his Chicago congregation. Video clips show Wright suggesting that America’s actions were partly to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks and accusing the country of continuing to mistreat blacks.

More than three decades ago, Wright took over a small, demoralized congregation on Chicago’s impoverished South Side and built it into the largest church in the liberal, mostly white United Church of Christ.

At the 8,000-member Trinity United Church of Christ, the slogan “Unashamedly black and unapologetically Christian” has meant preaching about divestment during South Africa’s apartheid era. It has also meant fighting poverty, homelessness and AIDS at home. The religious message has been anything but watered down.

The pastor’s experience is grounded not only in the civil rights movement, but also in 1960s black liberation theology, which applies the Christian Gospel to contemporary struggles against race-based oppression.

Wright does not focus his ire on white America alone, said Martin Marty, a retired professor of religious history who taught Wright at the University of Chicago. “He is very hard on his own people,” Marty said. “He criticizes them for their lack of fidelity in marriage, for black-on-black crime. He is not saying one part of America is right and one is wrong.”